'We did fight but no one lost any teeth': Pete Waterman speaks of Stock Aitken & Waterman

But the record-producing outfit called Stock Aitken & Waterman (SAW), with the pugnacious Pete Waterman at its centre, was always riven with creative tensions.

And when I call on Waterman at his converted warehouse home near London Bridge, he reveals that the word “hit” was apt for another reason far removed from SAW’s catchy singles.

For Waterman, 70, recalls somewhat alarmingly how relations between himself and his partners Mike Stock and Matt Aitken – the prolific award-winning musical team behind Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley, Jason Donovan, Mel and Kim, Bananarama and more – could become so tense that they actually came to blows.

The avuncular, bespectacled, grey-haired, denim-clad Waterman presents an unlikely pugilist as he sits dwarfed by a giant cream sofa but as he matter of factly puts it: “Quite often we argued like cats and dogs.  

“Anyone who worked with us will tell you that sometimes, yes, it did end up in fisticuffs.

“When you are in that close vicinity you lose it, you lash out. 

“We weren’t averse to slapping each other though we never knocked anyone’s teeth out or anything. It was all to do with the work, nothing else. 

“We would fight over lyrics.” 

Not that they allowed their differences to fester. 

Shortly after any such spats, he insists, they would be in the pub happily drinking pints together.

And Stock, Aitken and Waterman, who had their first number one hit with Dead Or Alive’s You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) in 1984, definitely had the Midas touch. 

In less than a decade they sold an estimated 500 million records, a haul that produced 100 Top 40 singles, 13 No1’s (including American hits) and generated them an income of £60million. 

But the trio broke up in the early 1990s after first Aitken and then Stock quit.  

“It had had its day,” concedes Waterman. 

Stock accused Waterman of “selling the family silver” after the latter sold 50 per cent of his company PWL – which released the SAW records – to Warner Brothers in 1992.

A bullish Waterman sees the matter differently. 

“The fact that Mike thought I was selling him down the river, that’s not the way I was looking at it. 

“I had the right to do what I wanted with my own business. 

“I was paying 69 people’s wages.

“I was having to come up with the budget to make the records and pay the bonuses. 

“I never put the business side on the other boys.

“We still kept SAW which shared a third, a third and a third.”

Stock and Aitken launched a legal action over copyright and royalty issues but it came to nothing and despite the lawsuit Waterman insists he “never fell out with anybody” and that all three recently attended a Jason Donovan concert together. 

“We had a good night, it was smashing,” he says. 

“You will never ever find me saying anything other than it was the luckiest day of my life when I met those two guys. 

“They are brilliant musicians and songwriters.”

Waterman is speaking to promote new triple CD The Hit Factory Ultimate Collection, featuring 50 hits chosen from SAW’s heyday plus tracks from his later career, including hits from the pop group Steps, which enjoyed huge success at the turn of the millennium.

Initially Waterman insists he does not have a favourite track or artist but later, as he talks about the show he presents for BBC Radio Coventry, he says there are three SAW tracks he “still plays and sound as good now as they did then”. . 

They are Bananarama’s Love In The Third Degree, Donna Summer’s This Time I Know It’s For Real and Rick Astley’s Never Going To Give You Up.

Waterman recalls a “more innocent time” in music. 

“There were no stylists for singers like there are now,” he says. 

“Rick Astley turned up at Top Of The Pops wearing an outfit from Next he had just bought for himself on the taxi journey there.” 

SAW were lambasted in the music press as formulaic and bubblegum but won acclaim in other circles, winning 13 Ivor Novello songwriting awards.  

“I’ve got rooms full of gold discs too,” Waterman adds.

He retains a paternal pride in his artists. 

“They are all still going strong. Bananarama is touring, there is Kylie of course, Rick tours and had a number one album, Sonia’s doing a tour and Steps have sold out. 

“Jason is about to do a tour,” he smiles.

Waterman sees SAW as a “pop punk” organisation, with its roster of working class British “kids” and Aussie soap stars. 

“Our motto was ‘Like us, hate us, we are never gonna be respectable’. 

“Respectable by Mel And Kim was our anthem but we were always serious about our music. 

“If you had read some of our reviews you would have thought we had mugged old people.”

The phenomenal success of Kylie Minogue eventually became a millstone around SAW’s neck. 

“At the time we didn’t know just how big Kylie was going to become.  

“It nearly killed us because she was so successful, it was just too powerful for a small company. 

“We had lots of acts. 

“We didn’t want it to just to be about one artist.” 

While he enjoys and plays contemporary pop music on his local radio show, Waterman feels pop acts today are too anonymous. 

“If people in the Top 10 now walked into this room, I wouldn’t know who they are.” 

Nor is he is a huge fan of modern pop idols such as One Direction: “You’d need to be a big fan to name any top five single by 1D.”

That is not something you could ever say about the enduring SAW repertoire. 

“I would not have believed it then that we would be still talking about our records made 30 years ago,” he reflects. 

“We didn’t think what would be happening in 2017, we were just living for the moment.”

The Hit Factory Ultimate Collection, 50 Classic Hits From A Golden Age Of Pop, out now, £9.99